This week’s issue includes awesome podcasts and I highly recommend the interviews with Dan Olsen, Chris Sacca and Ramit Sethi they offer great tips on product, sales and pricing. Also, check out the app directory from Slack that just launched. Enjoy!

HEAR it because, in this podcast Dan Olsen a Product Management consultant and author of The Lean Product Playbook talks about what makes for great products, great product managers and great product teams. He believes good PMs have strong empathy for users, are team players and can prioritize while having good answers to “why” questions.

READ it because, in this Medium story Des Traynor, Co-founder of Intercom reminds us why every iteration or feature of a product must deliver value to both the customer and the business. They use the baking a wedding cake example from a Peter Merholz presentation to prove why the quicker you can get feedback on what you’re thinking the better your idea will be.

READ it because, in this Medium story Paul J shares his thoughts on how Growth is changing Product Management as we know it. He shares a story from Noah Kagan a former PM at Facebook who was pushed back by Mark Zuckerberg who only cared about growth when Mark was told by Noah that they needed to make money to be a real business.

WATCH it because, in this recorded webinar, a panel from Frontier7 and Alpha UX discuss how product and research teams are overwhelmed with data about user preferences and behavior. But, how can they overcome the challenge of ensuring that the data they collect is valid, and how to filter through it to find the information they need to make data-driven decisions.

READ it because, in this Medium post Jason Fried, Co-founder at Basecamp shares a tip about evaluating a redesign. He believes you have to know what you’re looking for, not just what you’re looking at. Which is why he thinks it’s not a good idea to compare your new design to the old one.

READ it because, in this blog post from InVision, Tom Tancredi and Laurence Adrian from Dom & Tom share their favorite tips for taking your user experience to the next level. They talk about the importance of presentation, telling stories and using data for making decisions.

READ it because, in this Medium story Thomas Budiman shows us the importance of good design even for a Minimum Viable Product by using real world examples from products such as Uber, Airbnb and Evernote. He shares four tips to help you ship better MVPs, Use nice and simple visual design, Show unique values in onboarding screens, Welcome users on home screen and collect micro feedback after use.

READ it because, in this TechCrunch post Marious Moscovici from Metric Insights dives into the world of open source software. He believes companies no longer need to reinvent the wheels and can win the race by using commodity code to create high-value connections, intelligence and, above all, great services to solve problems.

READ it because, in this post Lauren Schiller of Fortune Magazine conducts an interview with founders of Glassbreakers. Their matchmaking algorithm takes in LinkedIn API data from user profiles in addition to input data from users when they first sign in to the app. Information such as professional interests, years of experience, and a quick bio. Their algorithm also gets smarter over time based on successful matches.

READ it because, in this TechCrunch post David Teten talks about finding the metrics that matter. He believes the best CEOs run their startups with metrics and for early stage companies the important metrics are typically around activation, engagement and retention. David argues the key thing to measure is whether the product is serving its users’ needs and do these users find life without it hard to imagine!

HEAR it because, in this awesome podcast, Pat Flynn interviews Ramit Sethi. They talk about all things sales and especially how to price your products. Pricing is a very important step in product development and most of the times it does not get enough attention. But not to worry, this episode should help you with pricing your product.

WATCH it because, in this episode of This Week In Startups, Jason Calacanis interviews the legendary angel investor Chris Sacca. They talk about relationships, Twitter, Shark Tank, the state of fundraising and what he looks for in an investment. During the interview, Chris also listens to pitches from three companies and offers feedback to founders about their businesses and how to move forward.

READ it because, Mashable interviews Slack CMO Bill Macaitis about the strategies used to grow Slack to a multi billion dollar company. His advice is to maintain a hunger for learning and he believes hyper-growth comes from building the best teams with a modern marketing tech stack.

READ it because, in this Medium story Jory MacKay from Crew shares all the resources they used for Unsplash Book campaign on Kickstarter. If you ever wanted to crowdfund your product, this extensive post is all you ever need to learn everything about building and managing a successful crowdfunding campaign.

TRY it because, Curiosity is an iPhone app that you can use as a context-aware Wikipedia reader. By using your location, trending topics, and other curated sections, Curiosity brings you the most interesting and relevant articles.

What's better than reading is sharing. Thanks!

“ Roadmaps are evidence of strategy. Not a list of features.” - Steve Johnson